From Kansas to Trump's voter commission: Who is Kris Kobach?

President Donald Trump appointed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to a new commission on May 11, 2017, that will investigate voter fraud and other election issues, according to White House officials. This video includes photos by AP Photo/Car

By

Up Next

President Donald Trump appointed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to a new commission on May 11, 2017, that will investigate voter fraud and other election issues, according to White House officials. This video includes photos by AP Photo/Car

A privacy group has filed a lawsuit to halt Kris Kobach’s controversial attempt to receive a bundle of voter information for a commission President Donald Trump says will root out voter fraud.

In the complaint, filed Monday by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in federal court, the Washington, D.C.-based group asks the court for a temporary restraining order to halt the collection of personal voter data.

In a statement posted on its website, EPIC said “that the Commission’s demand for detailed voter histories violated the Constitutional right to privacy.”

The group said that “by seeking to assemble an unnecessary and excessive federal database of sensitive voter data from state records systems, (the commission) violated the informational privacy rights of millions of Americans.”

Premium content for only $0.99

In a letter last week, Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, asked every state to provide Trump’s new voter commission with the full names of all registered voters along with their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information.

The lawsuit comes as opposition has continued to build against Kobach’s information request from states across the country, including from both Republican and Democratic leaders.

In a story Tuesday, CNN said, “Forty-four states have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration’s election integrity commission.”

Delbert Hosemann, a Republican who serves as Mississippi’s secretary of state, said in a recent statement that his response to Kobach’s request would be, “ They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from.

Kobach, a Republican who recently launched a bid for governor, has defended his request on behalf of the commission by saying the federal government would maintain voter privacy in its handling of the data.